Wednesday, August 15, 2012

My Fair Lady Part 5

ENCORE………ENCORE………

The Encore! Production of My Fair Lady, which
we worked soooo hard to put on and were soooo nervous about, up to the last
minute, was a rousing success; the seven scheduled performances were sold-out
well in advance and enthusiastically received. Many people said it was the best thing the
company ever did; certainly everyone in the cast loved every minute of it and had
the time of their life.One would always
like to think that one’s individual contribution played a part – small or large
– in the collective success. However, my role was, to be brutally honest,
miniscule, and they certainly could have done without me – although I wouldn’t
have wanted them to.What I found
surprising, however, was that the less I had to do, the more fatigued I became.

We were only going to do seven performances, none of them
“out of town,” i.e., in Ra’anana, Zichron Yaakov, or the like. No long bus
rides; no getting back to Jerusalem at 1AM. So why did I feel so pooped midway through the
run?Perhaps it was because the most
difficult thing I had to do was keep track of my costume pieces (even harder
than learning Every duke, and earl, and peer is here….).

Careful readers of these articles may remember that I
earlier wrote something to the effect that My Fair Lady was a
masterpiece in spite of itself.One of
the problems with the piece is that it fails to make effective use of the
ensemble. (Sir Arthur Sullivan is quoted as praising his collaborator,
"Until Gilbert took the matter in hand choruses were dummy concerns, and
were practically nothing more than a part of the stage setting. It was in
'Thespis' that Gilbert began to carry out his expressed determination to get
the chorus to play its proper part in the performance. At this moment it seems
difficult to realise that the idea of the chorus being anything more than a
sort of stage audience was, at that time, a tremendous novelty.") In any
piece by G&S – or Rodgers and Hammerstein, for that matter – being in the
chorus means waiting in the wings for your time to go out and take over the
stage; you know that whatever musical business you have is relevant, exciting,
and almost always advances the story line.

The justly acclaimed Ascot scene in My Fair Lady is
about the only time when the entire ensemble has something important to do;
otherwise, we’re pretty much wallpaper, pretending to do something while the
main characters carry on their business.(There are, of course, a few scenes in which a smaller group of
performers – servants or a bunch of guys hanging around – get involved in the
action; but that mercifully did not include me.) In addition, because of serious time constraints
during the rehearsal period, there was virtually no choreographed movement for
the men, except for Ascot; with nothing for us to learn, we were free to bop
about the stage, trying to look as “professional” as we could.As a result, while my sense of enjoyment in being
in the cast was high, my sense of personal accomplishment was low.Maybe that accounts for the draggy feeling I
felt waiting in the wings.Either that,
or I’m just getting old.

Either way, I felt a need to decompress, to “chill out,” once
our final scheduled Thurs. eve. performance was over.Normally, I look forward to the cast party a
few days after the production is over; it may be the best part of the
show!But I was just too weary to attend;
plus I would have had to cancel the Rambam shiur that usually meets at our
apartment on a Sunday eve.Anyway, it
was over.I would have the entire summer
to rest up and get ready for auditions for G&S’s Gondoliers.…..No it
wasn’t over!Not by a longshot.

When Robert Binder booked our performances in the Hirsch
Theatre back in January, he had to decide how many performances to
schedule.Just then, his crystal ball
was in the repair shop being reformatted, so he had to make a snap decision
using only his best judgment.He went
the conservative route and chose seven.He could have gone for more, but he was fearful of a half-empty
theater.Had he a glimmer of how successful
the production would be, of course he would have scheduled more.Was it too late to add a few more
performances?Would the hall be
available?Would the cast be around or
off to who-knows-where?There was talk on-and-off
about adding more performances, but nothing seemed to materialize.Then, seemingly out of the blue, we got the
word: two more shows on July 5. All the leads and most of the supporting cast
were around and available. We were good to go.

Not so simple as all that.At the conclusion of the seventh performance, everyone had handed in the
borrowed components of their costumes, tossed them into large boxes: men’s
shirts here, caps here, women’s aprons here. They would be cleaned, stored,
and, if borrowed, returned to their rightful owners. The process of assigning
appropriate and properly fitting (more or less!) costumes usually went on over
a period of weeks and even months.Now
we would have two or three days to figure out which of the men’s dress pants –
all looking reasonably alike, but of widely divergent sizes – had been ours.Fortunately, many of the pieces still had the
names of the wearer inside; but it took me almost an hour to retrieve my
swallow tail coat, black pants with a stripe, formal white shirt with
cufflinks, two pairs of gloves, two different top hats, the other black jacket,
a bow tie and a cravat, two formal vests, a pair of spats, a threadbare jacket
with mismatched vest, and a grey cap several sizes too small. Plus, there were
the few items of my own sitting in my closet (those I could find; just remember
not to close the door with a cat inside). The props I would need would be made
available as we needed them: an umbrella, a pair of fake opera glasses, a
handkerchief, and a walking stick.All
of this for the few minutes I scamper about the stage!

A somewhat bigger project would be repacking all the scenery
and props, getting them to the theater, and setting everything up (this part of
the project I leave to the younger and the stronger). Then the lighting and
sound crews would have to reconfigure everything all over again for the two
performances that day.Then, sometime
after 11PM, the swallow tail coat, black pants with a stripe, formal white
shirt with cufflinks, two pairs of gloves, two different top hats, the other
black jacket, a bow tie and a cravat, two formal vests, a pair of spats, a
threadbare jacket with mismatched vest, and a grey cap several sizes too small
would be again tossed into boxes, along with everyone else’s costumes.The set would again be struck: the music
stands disassembled, all the electrical wiring wrapped up, the backdrops lowered
and folded neatly, the scenery moved over to the loading dock to go back to
storage.Life in the Theater is not as fun-filled
as it seems!

Something wonderful happened with this production.Usually it has taken months for the filming
of a live performance to be turned into a DVD, and the one for HMS Pinafore
simply didn’t work.But this time, the DVD
version was ready almost immediately, and I was able to get a copy right
away.I sauntered over to our DVD player,
which is connected to the old TV we use to watch downloaded movies, and gingerly
inserted the disc. So that’s what it looked like from the front of the stage, not
from the back of the chorus! And that’s what was going on while we were all schmoozing
backstage!Both Jonathan Gillis
(Higgins) and Miri Fraenkel (Eliza) were even better than I remembered.You could even see me from time to time – if you
looked carefully enough.

But you know what was really great?We could sit on the couch in whatever we
happened to be wearing, or not wearing, and enjoy the show.I didn’t have to worry that I had with me the
swallow tail coat, black pants with a stripe, formal white shirt with
cufflinks, two pairs of gloves, two different top hats, the other black jacket,
a bow tie and a cravat, two formal vests, a pair of spats, a threadbare jacket
with mismatched vest, and a grey cap several sizes too small.I didn’t have to worry that I was wearing the
right combination with the right props and whether I would make it on stage at
the right time.It’s great to be on
stage; but it’s nice once in a while to sit back and just enjoy what
collectively you have accomplished. Still, I wonder what the costumes for Gondoliers
will look like?

About Me

I made aliyah in the summer of 2007 along with my wife Barbara,one daughter, Natania, and an elderly cat named Mimi (now deceased)to Ma'ale Adumim, a community of about 40,000 Jewish souls -- a little bit east of Yerushalayim. (My other daughter, Tina, made aliyah on her own a few weeks before we did and is living and working in Tel Aviv -- along with her new husband, David.) I will be learning Hebrew, working on this blog as well as other writings, and continuing to do traditional and now digital photography as I have been doing for almost 40 years.